Stardust(20)

“You better call the caterer,” Iris shouted from the dining room.

“All right. I don’t see what’s so difficult. I said poached salmon.”

“Well, he heard ham.”

She opened a door at the end of the hall. “You’re in here. I’d better phone or she’ll nag me about it. If you’d like a swim, just use those stairs—the pool’s out back. I won’t be long.”

A swim. Something he hadn’t had in four years. He gestured toward his bag. “I didn’t bring—” Who had bathing suits?

“Use one of Daniel’s. He’s got a drawer full of them. Just root around and pick what you like.”

He threw his bag on the bed and went over to the window. The pool was below, blue and rippling, catching the light in quick flashes. It had been set off from the rest of the hill by a private wall of trees, with the far end left open, so that the land seemed suspended in air before falling away to the distant grid of streets. Around the edge were large pots of geraniums, a few lemon trees, and a row of trimmed oleanders, high enough to flower but not block the view. Ben stared at the pool, unsettled, as if a wrong note of music had been hit, jarring the whole piece. He’d thought of Danny as somehow desperate, not lying on a chaise in the sun, picking fruit off trees. How did they fit? An acre of paradise and a room at the Cherokee Arms.

He went to the dressing room, curious. More money. Rows of sport jackets on hangers, shoes laid out. A drawer full of bathing suits: tropical flowers, chevron stripes, finally a pair of navy blue trunks that could be anybody’s. He looked through the other drawers quietly, feeling like a burglar. Socks rolled up, a stack of handkerchiefs, pressed and folded. But Danny’s drawer at home had been neat, too. Under the handkerchiefs there were old passports, kept for some reason, filled with the stamps of their childhood, crossing into Germany, crossing out of Germany, Dover and Calais, Berlin-Tempelhof, the last with an eagle on a swastika, just before the pages ran out. He looked at the photo. In his next passport he’d be grown up, but here he was still young, the hair brushed to one side.

Where would the other pictures be? His study, probably. He crossed the hall, carrying the trunks, and surprised Iris, who was putting papers away in drawers.

“I’m just cleaning up in here. You get people in and out, you know they’re going to come snooping. They go looking for the bathroom and next thing they’re at the desk, just happening to read what’s on it. I’ve seen it. Something I can help you with?”

“No, I’m just snooping myself,” Ben said. “Trying to find some pictures. You know, we haven’t seen each other in a while.”

She went over to the shelves where a few small frames rested against the books.

“This is pretty recent,” she said, handing him one.

Ben looked down. A group on the beach, Danny with his lopsided grin, making a face at the camera. The whole row smiling, enjoying the day. Liesl wore a two-piece suit with polka dots, like Chili Williams, her hair blowing behind her.

“You planning to stay long?”

Ben raised his head.

“I only ask because of the food. So I can plan.”

“I don’t want to make things worse for her,” Ben said, a question.

Iris shook her head. “Far as that’s concerned, she could use the company. You know what it’s like in an empty house. She’s already taking it hard. It’s the suddenness of it. And the way—” She stopped and went back to the desk. “Don’t mind me.”

Ben put the picture back, then glanced down at the day bed. “He spend a lot of time in here?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant. I suppose you’ve been hearing things? People like to talk. When it’s none of their business. I’ll tell you, I never saw it. But people have different ways. You take Mr. Baker—that’s my ex. That man was a hound. I threw him out. I said, ‘I know you can’t help it, you got to chase anything runs in front of you, but I don’t want any part of it.’ Now Mr. Kohler, I never saw that. Two years I’ve been working here. Since they got the house. So you live and learn.” She closed the drawer and looked up at him. “He seemed the same to me. Like always. Well.” She moved to the door. “You want to help, people have to eat. She hasn’t touched a thing in days. Melon. What’s melon? Water is all. Get her to eat something.”

When she’d gone, Ben looked at the other pictures, more wrong notes, as jarring as the pool. Danny and Liesl on a picnic blanket. With another couple around a nightclub table covered with glasses. Hans Ostermann, unintentionally comic in his somber European suit, surrounded by Danny and a few other young men in tennis whites. A croquet game. A pool party. Danny smiling in all of them. A happy life. But everybody smiled for the camera.